Wednesday, May 31, 2017

You might know animator David Firth as the creator of the legendary Salad Fingers. He has posted an eerie new short film that's an ad campaign parody for a product called "cream." The promises of the product start out mundane, but quickly escalates into the bizarre. Cream is not only a cure-all, it performs miracles! You'll start to wonder how the story can get any weirder, and then it does. (via Metafilter)

Seniors at Basha High School in Chandler, Arizona, toss paper down the stairs to celebrate the end of school. It's more paper than you imagine. Senior Jordan White captured the video, which went viral on Twitter. Witty_Squirtle is the class valedictorian, and created a reddit account to explain what's going on in the video.

Hi, student at Basha High School, a.k.a the school seen in the video above, here, created a Reddit account just to explain to you guys what's going on because Twitter is a firestorm and Reddit is usually better at that sort of thing.

This is known as the Paper drop, a very long time school tradition at Basha where all the seniors gather in the F Building stairwell after the second bell of C lunch on the last day of school and toss every paper, yes every paper, that they have saved up over 4 years of attending the school. Each year students bring trash bags full of paper to the school and dump them all at once. The "waterfall" you see in the video was only a little of a probably 5-10 minute drop of paper.

Afterwards, seniors slide down the stairs and go outside to where they take pictures, say goodbye to teachers, and say goodbye to the school for one last time as graduation is done at Arizona State University. While the seniors are reminiscing, underclassmen from across the school, as well as a teacher that brings a leafblower every year, gather the papers up into trashbags to be RECYCLED while the janitors talk and watch along with everyone else.

Basha High School is a fantastic place that's had its ups and downs, but this one event brings together everyone from geek to jock into one, single, Basha Bear student body.

America's Got Talent returned for season 12 last night with a lineup of first round acts that delighted the audience. One was 12-year-old Darci Lynne Farmer, who managed to sing a song without moving her lips and operated a puppet at the same time. In the old days, we called this ventriloquism. She got a golden buzzer for that one! (via Tastefully Offensive)

Trump make a serious typo in a Tweet last night that has already been deleted, but since it was six hours before he caught the misspelling, it will live on in infamy. "Covfefe" has already entered the English lexicon. See tons of jokes about the Tweet under the hashtag #covfefe. (via Buzzfeed)

Look at this beautiful candy! Each piece looks like an antique glass paperweight with a rose blossom inside. Gregory Cohen of Lofty Pursuits shows us how they are made. While this batch of candy is cherry-flavored, later batches produced rose-flavored candies. A lot of work goes into these, so I don't think you'll be making them at home. But while we watch the magic unfold, Cohen keeps us entertained by talking about everything under the sun. You can buy the candy at Public Displays of Confection. (via Laughing Squid)

Wonder Woman opened in theaters this weekend, and both audiences and critics love it. Screen Junkies decided that it was a good time to look back at a really bad superhero film designed around a woman: the 2004 Halle Berry film Catwoman. This will be like shooting fish in a barrel. Once you've relived the horror that was Catwoman, you'll be aching to see the critically-acclaimed Wonder Woman. (Thanks, Lacey!)

A giant Pacific octopus has learned where to get an easy crab meal -from a crab fisherman's trap! An octopus is about the smartest creature living underwater, so a trap designed for dumb crabs is easy to break into -and break out of. In this video from BBC Earth, we see how the octopus takes advantage of the trapped seafood feast presented to him. Not only does he figure out the trap, but his ability to fit through the smallest of holes serves him well. (via Digg)

In a security video that may remind you of a certain scene from The Blues Brothers, a car is seen driving through the Kazan International Airport in Russia a few months ago, while police officers give chase on foot. Although it appears that the driver got away at the end of the video, he was apprehended and charged with several crimes. You guessed it, alcohol was involved. The video originally had no sound, but everyone instantly knew what the soundtrack should be. (via reddit)

Sunday, May 28, 2017

Shenandoah,
Pennsylvania, erected banners along its main street to honor local
veterans. This banner salutes five brothers who all served in the armed
forces: Thomas, Michael, Robert, Francis, and Jack Gergal. The youngest,
Jack, is the sole remaining brother, and came in from out of town to
see the banners. He's shown here saluting his brothers. Jack's grandson
shared this image, and said,

Jack served 20 years in
the military, 16 for the AF and 4 for the Navy. He was mostly a mechanic
for various aircraft but also spent time as a "Hurricane Hunter". He
was the youngest so his older brothers participated earlier than him and
they served different branches of the military but they all served.

Happy birthday to the world's most famous cat! Maru was born ten years ago this week. In this video, we see clips of his kitten hood, and his latest adventures. Maru now has a worldwide audience and a little sister named Hana, but he still take pleasure in the simple things, like boxes. He's just as charming at ten as ever. (via Fark)

The idea seems kind of silly, but once you start watching, it's really kind of neat. Your favorite movies have numbers in them, and ThorC1138 edited them to count down from 100 to zero. You'll recognize most of them, and if you are wondering about any of the others, there's a list at the YouTube page. Then you start thinking about how much work it had to be to find and isolate all those numbers, and you have to respect the madness that went into this project. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Saturday, May 27, 2017

How do you make the horror film Alien into a comedy? Well, first you get rid of that darned xenomorph altogether, and you make it about the cat Jones. In this parody trailer, which is honestly pretty short, Mashable proves that you don't need jokes to make a comedy trailer. You don't even need laughs, although there is a giggle or two here. All you need is the music. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Mark Zuckerberg gave the commencement address at Harvard University's graduation ceremonies on Thursday -and grabbed most of the headlines. But he wasn't the only celebrity on hand. Ten honorary degrees were bestowed, including a doctor of music to composer John Williams. The Harvard Din and Tonics, an a cappella group, performed a tribute to Williams during the ceremonies.

The medley of movie themes included music from Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, Superman, Jaws, and more. (via Laughing Squid)

A motorist with a dash cam pulled up to an intersection and stopped with plenty of room for pedestrians to cross. The guy crossing the street didn't not seem happy about it at all. But he got his. Then, for bonus points, he gets angry again! (via Boing Boing)

Friday, May 26, 2017

In the movies, we hear "No time to explain!" a lot, because the audience already knows the story, and there's no reason to waste time telling the tale again to a character that was out of the loop. But what if the audience were also out of the loop?

This poor guy is suddenly caught up in an adventure he doesn't understand, involving tinfoil hats, a time machine, aliens, and murder. We don't understand it, either. The two protagonists immediately encounter a paradox when they travel backward in time and encounter themselves. But there's no time to explain!

The operative idea here is when they go back in time ten minutes, and the clueless partner says, "Why didn't you set it to 15 minutes back so we'd have five minutes to talk?" Yeah, that would have required an explanation that made sense, so no. Oh, there may be more of the story to come, or maybe not. (via Digg)

I recently posted a video about cats attacking things and knocking objects off tables. I mentioned that they were trying to cause chaos and destruction, but Chris Poole has an alternate theory. These cats are conducting experiments!
[https://youtu.be/opS5jaFEoPU] (YouTube link) https://youtu.be/opS5jaFEoPU
It makes perfect sense: cats are naturally curious, and are masters of observation, exploration, and manipulation. Plus this theory gives us a reason to watch Cole and Marmalade being their everyday charming selves. (via Laughing Squid)

Thursday, May 25, 2017

They say that if you love sausage or law, you shouldn't watch either being made. Maybe they should say the same for CGI filmmaking. Disney gives us a look at how Dan Stevens acted out the part of the Beast in the recent live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. Yeah, he's a handsome man, but wearing a motion capture suit with beast prosthetics while Emma Watson looked perfect -well, it just looks ridiculous. Sure, it's interesting to see how it's done, but it would be even more interesting to find out how the cast and crew managed to keep a straight face during the filming. (via The Daily Dot)

On May 25, 1977, forty years ago today, a new movie named Star Wars opened
at 42 theaters. No one knew it would become an unstoppable juggernaut,
spawning seven sequels and prequels with another opening this year,
plus video games, TV shows, million of toys, and even a theme park. In
1977, the idea of a "franchise" in filmmaking had been put on the back
burner after the cheaply-made Saturday morning serials of the 1930-'50s.
If Star Wars hadn't been such a moneymaker, there never would have been The Empire Strikes Back or any other sequel. And what would that have been like?

If
no Star Wars sequels would have changed Lucas, think of how it would
have changed Star Wars. Darth Vader is never Luke Skywalker’s father. We
never meet Yoda. (Which has to affect Frank Oz’s career somehow, no? Do
we still get What About Bob?) There’s no Jabba the Hutt, or Lando
Calrissian, or Han Solo frozen in carbonite, or Ewoks. (Some of these
changes, admittedly, would be greater losses than others.)

We
would have never known which hero gets the girl! And while there might
still be the "special editions," even they would have been different. Read more about this fantasy at Screen Crush.

And since it is the 40th anniversary of Star Wars, here are some more articles paying tribute to Luke, Darth, and the galaxy far, far away.

Steve Urkel was designed to be a peripheral character to the Winslow family on the sitcom Family Matters. But as portrayed by Jaleel White, the over-the-top craziness of Urkel took over and became an icon. He was bad to the bone -at least in his own mind.

Melodysheep went through about ten years of clips from Family Matters, edited them down, and added some autotune to made this tribute to one of the strangest "crazy neighbor" characters in all of television. (via Tastefully Offensive)

We could learn a lot from animals. Mainly that we are not as important as we think we are. This delightful animation from The School of Life reminds us that living simply, as animals do, can go a long way toward letting go of the anxieties we carry around. (via Laughing Squid)

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but there's no punch line, just a
group of new friends. TigerLily is a drag performer in Beijing. Four
monks who had traveled all the way from Tibet heard music and laughter
and wandered into his venue and had a wonderful time. That may sound
weird, but one commenter said that Buddhist monks "always seem to approach life as it were the funniest joke ever told." TigerLily posted an album of more pictures from the same night. A good time was had by all. (via reddit)

Remember the ten kittens who were supposed to pose for a portrait? They belong to Natalya and Evgeny Mishukovi, who are busy enriching their lives with things to play with. Here, they shower the kittens with a bunch of paper scraps to create a indoor pile of wonderfulness. You can see more of the kittens' adventures at their YouTube channel. (via Laughing Squid)

You know where facehuggers come from, don't you? From xenomorph eggs, of course! We can skip the middleman and just ingest the eggs first without all that face-hugging unpleasantness, when the eggs are made of cake. Rosanna Pansino of Nerdy Nummies shows us how to recreate the eggs from the Alien movie series in delicious mint chocolate cake. This would be perfect for that Alien marathon party you've planned to prepare your crew for the new movie Alien: Covenant. Just don't blame me when they want to re-emerge from your chest. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Screen Junkies' 200th Honest Trailer is for the relatively recent movie Logan. First, let me warn you, this is full of spoilers. I didn't know what Logan was about at all, except that it was about Wolverine, but now I feel like I've seen the whole thing. Second (and this is a spoiler for the video), they couldn't find anything bad to say about it. So if you haven't already seen the movie, you might want to sip this Honest Trailer until you do. However, if you have seen Logan, you'll enjoy the Honest Trailer with a special surprise guest critic.

Tuesday, May 23, 2017

Can color kill? Not by itself, but humans love color so much that we are drawn to things that may be really dangerous because we like the pretty colors. The problem was that there was such a lag between discovering something that gave us a wonderful color and the point we realized it was killing people. You'll hear several of those stories in this TED-Ed lesson from J. V. Maranto. (via Boing Boing)

When a cat has a poor opinion of something, they will let you know, clearly, in their own way. In this compilation video from the Pet Collective, you'll see cats hating on modern technology, toys, family members, and everyday objects. To be honest, some of these clips aren't so much dislike for objects, but more of a cat wanting to see how much destruction and chaos they can cause. Yet we still love them.

Steve rushed to help when a bomb went off at the Manchester Arena yesterday. When things are falling apart, it's good to remind ourselves that for every awful person that causes death and destruction, there are more good people. (via reddit) https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/6cun6f/this_is_steve_a_homeless_man_who_was_near_the/

Sooner or later, every family takes a road trip to Six Flags, Disney World, or some other large theme park to show the kids a good time. That means standing in line for a hour to ride a one-minute ride, paying out the wazoo for lunch, and dealing with tired, cranky kids (or even worse, bored teenagers) and sunburn. There's a price to pay for everything. In the latest Honest Ad from Cracked, Roger Horton dresses up like Walt Disney and welcomes us to Hortonland, where all your dreams will come true- even if they are nightmares.

Several times a day, we get a new yet old obituary from a bot that Tweets reports of deaths at Medieval Death Bot. The causes of death are intriguing, as they raise more questions than can possibly be answered. (via b3ta) http://www.b3ta.com/

5 Things You Didn't Know About Blue Jeans. The American uniform for almost 100 years.

Why Occam's Razor Doesn't Apply to Physics.
"Physics has shown us time and time again that our human views of
what's logically consistent or preferred are terrible guides to
understanding the Universe."

This news anchor is telling us about the planned renovation of some areas of Moscow, when she's interrupted by a Labrador retriever that had snuck behind the desk. It was startling. She tries to keep her cool and continue with the news, but all the attention is on the dog. Finally, she ends this clip by explaining that this is why she is a cat person. It's not nice to be upstaged. (via Tastefully Offensive)

Monday, May 22, 2017

I knew Fox News was completely partisan, but even I was shocked at the clips included in this video. You'd think that a TV news network would want to be subtle about their partisanship, but apparently I haven't been watching Fox News enough to realize how very bad it is. (via the A.V. Club)

is planned for 2019. That's 24 years after the first movie. You have to wonder how long they can keep it up. This comic from Berkeley Mews gives us an idea of how the story might be ultimately wrapped up. Too bad it's an animated horror film. (via Geeks Are Sexy)

Mason the feral cat was ill, injured, and infected when he was taken in by Tinykittens feral TNR program. Because of his condition, he was placed in a home instead of being returned to the feral colony. Mason is only semi-tamed; he still won't let anyone pet him. But he has adopted a litter of kittens placed in the same foster home. They make him happy. There are several more videos of Grandpa Mason and his kittens at Tiny Tuxies. (via reddit)